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Category Archives: Arizona

By working together, local and federal officers can better identify and remove criminal aliens — which is a tremendous benefit to public safety. — Immigration Customs and Enforcement

Last month, I met Arizona state Senator Russell Pearce, who drafted the state’s common-sense immigration enforcement law. He stressed that the nation needs immigration enforcement not just on the border, but in the interior as well. Over half the country’s illegal aliens entered through the Arizona border. Senator Pearce said he has listened to stories about families living on the border threatened by drug runners and gangs trespassing on their land. Some of these bold thugs even threatened to return and kill the families of anyone who calls the police. Earlier this year, an illegal alien murdered Arizona cattle rancher Robert Krentz on his property.

Arizona is one of 20 states that currently participates in the Immigration and Nationality Act’s 287(g) federal training program. Signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1995, the provision permits the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to enter into a written Memorandum of Agreement with state and local agencies to train and to deputize law enforcement officers to identify and detain illegal aliens.

Mexico gets its a say in one of the lawsuits challenging Arizona’s immigration enforcement law.

A federal judge on Thursday granted Mexico’s request to be allowed to file a legal brief supporting the challenge. That means the judge will consider the brief Mexico submitted previously.

Mexico says it wants to defend its citizens’ rights and that the law would lead to racial profiling and hinder trade and tourism. It also says the law would hinder work against drug trafficking and related violence.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who signed the law on April 23 and changes to it on April 30, has lawyers defending it in court.

Mexico on Tuesday asked a federal court in Arizona to declare the state’s new immigration law unconstitutional, arguing that the country’s own interests and its citizens’ rights are at stake.

Lawyers for Mexico on Tuesday submitted a legal brief in support of one of five lawsuits challenging the law. The law will take effect July 29 unless implementation is blocked by a court.

The law generally requires police investigating another incident or crime to ask people about their immigration status if there’s a “reasonable suspicion” they’re in the country illegally. It also makes being in Arizona illegally a misdemeanor, and it prohibits seeking day-labor work along the state’s streets.

Until recently, Mexican law made illegal immigration a criminal offense — anyone arrested for the violation could be fined, imprisoned for up to two years and deported. Mexican lawmakers changed that in 2008 to make illegal immigration a civil violation like it is in the United States, but their law still reads an awful lot like Arizona’s.

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R) doesn’t scare easily. President Obama (D) doesn’t scare her, neither does the US Attorney General, Erick Holder, or the ACLU all of whom, in one form or another, have threatened to take her state to court over Arizona’s decision to implement US immigration laws. No problem, she told John King on CNN, staunchly defending her policies.

“We’ll meet you in court,”

(snip)

“I have a pretty good record of winning in court.”

(snip)“I think what we’ve done is mirrored a federal law,” she said. “The people of Arizona, certainly people throughout America agree that it is the right thing to do. We’ve been down this path before with securing our borders in Arizona. And nothing was finished.”

“So we need to move forward,” Brewer added. “You know, it’s trespassing when you cross the border into Arizona into the United States. It’s trespassing. We need our borders secured.”

Enforcing federal law is not illegal, is not racist; it is, by definition, the law.

But Brewer said Tuesday the law does not target an individual’s specific race. She also made clear driver’s licenses are not sufficient to prove citizenship.

“It wouldn’t matter if you are Latino or Hispanic or Norwegian,” she said. If you didn’t have proof of citizenship and the police officer had reasonable suspicion, he would ask and verify your citizenship. I mean, that’s the way that it is. That’s what the federal law says. And that’s what the law in Arizona says.”

And the American public seems to agree with her. Although CNN, like most other media, refers to Arizona’s law as controversial, another poll, by Quinnipiac University, released Tuesday reinforced findings of previous polls of its high approval.

48 percent said they want their state to pass legislation similar to Arizona’s, while 35 percent said they do not. Overall, 51 percent approve of the law, opposed to 31 percent who disapprove.

Obama and Brewer are scheduled to meet Thursday; both are politicians so neither will publicly blink first. But Brewer probably won’t back down.

On the heels of Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s speech slamming Arizona’s immigration law, Cuban leaders and Venezuela’s president are adding to the chorus and calling the law ‘racist and xenophobic” – but they’re carrying their own human rights baggage.

Cuban parliamentarians passed a resolution last week denouncing Arizona’s new law as “racist and xenophobic,” as well as a “brutal violation of human rights.” Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, meanwhile, reportedly blasted the law through his minister of foreign affairs, demanding that it be “repealed” and that America move away from its “old habits of racism.”

Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro said immigrants in the U.S. are treated in a manner that’s “inconsistent with human rights … a perennial violation against our fellow Latin Americans,” CNSNews.com reported.

Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said those criticisms are misguided given the state of human rights in both Cuba and Venezuela.Continue reading →

As if we needed one, here’s another item showing bias in the way the mainstream media covers the controversial Arizona illegal immigration law. Many major news organizations, including, MSNBC, CNN, and USA Today for example, covered a story about a group of Police Chiefs who met with A.G. Eric Holder to register their objections to the Arizona law.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holdermet with about a dozen police chiefs today, including the top cops from Phoenix, Los Angeles and Houston, to discuss Arizona’s strict new immigration law.

The police chiefs told the attorney general the new law threatens to “drive a wedge” between their communities and law enforcement, according to the Associated Press. Police chiefs from Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Salt Like City and San Jose, Calif. will also attended today’s meeting with Holder.

In what appears to be a growing national trend, an illegal immigrant with an extensive criminal record and multiple deportation orders remained in the U.S. long enough to commit yet another atrocious crime.

The tragic case in Washington State marks the latest of many examples illustrating the government’s inefficiency in keeping dangerous illegal aliens out of the United States, even when they have well-documented criminal histories and federal orders to leave the country.

In this case a Mexican national with an extensive criminal record and nine deportation orders raped a woman in Edmonds, a picturesque waterfront town famous for its views of the Olympic Mountains rising above Puget Sound. The illegal immigrant (Jose Lopez Madrigal) was first deported in California more than two decades ago and has since been convicted of a multitude of violent crimes, including armed theft, sexual assault and drug-related offenses.